Hoseok had waved back between Taehyung and the room outside of theirs.
"I have no means with him." Taehyung had fiddled with his fingers around Jimin's wrist.
Which hurt Jimin, but he was too afraid to bring it up anyhow.
"Wai- I thought Hoseok- And Seokj-"
"Did I not just explain this to you?" Taehyung glared back at Jimin whose eyes widened at the harsh claim.
"No, actually." Jimin tripped through the door with Taehyung pulling him to follow.
Jimin looked back at Hoseok, the pit in his face still there from when Jimin had seen him last.
Festering at a game of chess.
"Will you let me go???" Jimin tugged back. Taehyung only let go to put Jimin behind him whenever he found the deviant body of Jin on the sofa.
"What's wrong with Hoseok? Why is his face like that Taehyung?" Jimin clutched onto him, hugging back with the increasing fear and guilt of whatever had caused the change in Hoseok, and the reappearance of Jin.
Taehyung would not answer, again. There was more shit around him for him to consider.
"I do not have the will to argue. I am simply here for company." Jin had his back to the two.
For him to absently mention an argument, gave away the lie of no intention to get into one.
"Bullshit." Taehyung had Jimin in tight with his grasp, not that he was too troubled by it.
Jin bent his head down, sticking his hand out to flip a King of Hearts.
"I do not understand why you resent me, or want me gone."
"Your glutton with your yearn to tear your teeth through my heart? Maybe, that might be the reason, who knows?" Taehyung's sarcasm had bad timing, but it was truthful enough to receive a lessened reaction from those around who heard it.
"And who made me like this, hm?" Jin turned with his hand folded.
He looked at Jimin, the restful temper he had veiled within his scarlet eyes, damned enough for Jimin not to notice it.
"I gave you Hoseok back."
"He is half aware." Taehyung sneered, regardless of whether or not Hoseok was there.
"Alive, is he not? Or, 'alive." Jin motioned his fingers to neglect the trueness of Hoseok's liveliness.
"He is mostly ill-willed like you." Taehyung almost began to laugh.
Something in his tone seemed to be humorous enough to sound like he was the one lying, or playing along.
Jimin looked up at Taehyung. Taehyung had the immense determination to keep Jimin behind him, and refrain from any unnecessary mentions.
Jimin startled himself whenever the abrupt blow of air split pass him and Yoongi found himself accompanying Taehyung in the brawl.
"Where did you come fro-"
"Don't let your ideals confuse you." Yoongi whispered, patting Jimin's head.
He wasn't a child.
"I helped you remember Jimin, did I not?" Jin shuffled to find a better idea as to why Jimin was hiding.
"Do not answer that Jimin."
Jimin nodded after Taehyung had somehow apprised him of the repercussions if he did.
"I can be very, very reasonable. Jimin, understand this. I am not the one who seeks you harm, knowingly. You said you did not hope for us to harm you, correct? Which you are right, but you have this relentless thought, need, for us to hurt you." Jin shook his head. He knelt down, sliding the card across the floor for it to attend Jimin, Taehyung keeping it away with his foot.
"But Taehyung told me that I make you all hurt me."
"Not, entirely. That's still their will. Their main pursuit, isn't it?" Jin cocked his head back at Taehyung, whose head flared with lethal ideas.
"And what I wanted, was reason, like you Jimin. Yes, I do resent you. But I do not seek vengeance. Just like you. Because that's what you made me to be, you." Jin smiled through his divided words, and looked around for the loathing that would hover over him once he straightened his position.
"Leave, Seokjin." Hoseok raised his hand to promote the quietude of the other.
"You're just as sinister. White, pacifist, amiable? If that were the truth, then I should be branded with your muted color." Jin found Hoseok progressively giving in, somehow finding an unseen barrier around him that would not allow that.
"Do not get me wrong Jimin, this is not their fault. They did not give themselves the intention to hurt you, you did. But, Taehyung already told you that... They are shamed to this, and have no way of getting through the dazed closure you placed around them." Jin whispered this, and only looked over to find Taehyung less angry, but lowered down to a level of mortification.
"Taehyung, give me the card." Jimin poked pass Jin, and at Taehyung's arm.
Jin looked back to Taehyung.
"Give it to him Taehyung."
"Go." Taehyung's temper seeped behind him, for the sake of anyone but himself.
Jin was speaking a truth that only he knew, nobody else. And it began to deter whatever Taehyung was initially intending to do.
"I have not been this bewildered in a long time. Let me and the others alone, Seokjin." Taehyung stumbled back, the stuck below him.
"Give me the card." Jimin poked again.
Taehyung ignored.
"Give it to me Taehyung." Jimin was beginning to pick sides.
He chose Jin's, and it ruined Taehyung's coercing whenever he looked at Jimin, failing to speak.
Jin sighed.
Instead, he chose to begin to walk over and give Jimin the card himself.
Taehyung hurriedly had him by the neck, Yoongi, Namjoon, and Hoseok grabbing him by his arms and waist to keep him from the interaction with Jimin.
Though, due to Taehyung's moving, the card hidden beneath his shoe was obtainable.
Jimin picked up the card.
Taehyung looked down, scattering away from Jin to lunge out and attempt to take the card back. Instead, he held back onto Jin.
Jimin shoved away, and looked.
There was no King on the card, but rather a painting of a scenery.
Jimin grimaced.
"It's beautiful."
Taehyung turned around, frantically struggling between letting Jin go again, or taking the card away.
The painting had a table, marble, with tea cups and sugar cubes lined up in front of the people who sat there.
At the head of the table, was a man with a worn top hat.
"The Hatter?" Jimin pointed, eyeing back up at Taehyung.
Taehyung glared, his usual want to not dwell impulsively, teetering away the more Jimin detailed the card.
And the colors were adorning.
They were vibrant, living, much better in comparison to the environment he had lived in now.
At the sides of the table, was a man in a red waistcoat, a clock ticking in one hand, a tea cup tipping to his lips in the other.
He was happy, and it countered the look on the face of the other, who had a similar persona. Jungkook.
Another had a monocle, and the choosing of a cigarette rather than the tea. But he didn't look ill with cigarette smoke and ash. He looked smart enough to only be having that cigarette for the first time that day, simply to set back and enjoy everything around him.
Unlike Namjoon, who smoked right after he'd finish a cigarette to dismiss his environment.
Beside him was a smiling man who had seemed to be partly there, partly else where. Whomever painted this, did an astonishing job at depicting these people.
The smile was half torn between a plead for another cup of the tea, or to be left alone and chat around with everyone else.
The man beside him had a pawn in his hand as he laughed down at the tea, rather than the people around him. The man with reddening hair was grinning too, handing a card to the White King.
They were laughing with one any other, and they easily got along, despite their opposing colors.
And the last had blonde hair, sat at the lap of the hatter, and finding himself able to look around to everyone, with a tea cup in his hand too.
"They look happy." Jimin smiled.
It must be nice to laugh like that with friends.
"They were." Taehyung had an unexplainable amount of wrath and belittlement to break in and tell what had detained that happiness.
"Flip the card Jimin." Jin shoved back away from the coverage of his mouth, to finally mention the back of the card to the smaller.
Jimin flipped over the card.
He frowned.
There, the realm within the card had lost the color. It had been mostly red, with the blood of those same seven.
The white one had been beaten to the pavement, his face shattered at the ground. The chess table was tossed over him, and the pieces had torn into his skin.
The one with the clock had the shattered glass to his throat, and the blue one had been set aflame.
The one with the felines grin had a torn smile, the rest of his lips dipped down to neglect the bloodied snickering.
And the hatter had his heart in the hand of the blonde, with the Red King reaching to prevent them from taking the heart, and finding a knife to his.
"Who are they?" Jimin shrugged. He was nonchalant.
He just found the art marveling. The faces of the painting were too deranged to be recognizable.
Taehyung let Jin go.
Jimin brought his head back between the people in the card, and the people in front of him.
Their hair was the same.
Red, a darker red, blue, green, bluish-green, white.
"Oh, they're you guys? Did Jin paint this!?" And Jimin began to have the repeating fear over Jin again.
"No. Why would I paint my own departure?" Jin shook his head.
"Name them." Namjoon lit a cigarette. Lovely choice.
"Taehyung, Jungkoo-" Jimin began to point at which was who.
"No, no." Namjoon stopped Jimin's rambling. He was giving the wrong answers.
Jimin glared, bemused by the interruption.
The six looked back with motioning looks for the correct terminology of their names.
"Oh..." Jimin found himself needing to remember.
The picture was very clear, he should have been able to the first time.
"The Hatter... White Rabbit, um-" Jimin flipped the card back and forth.
Right, the King.
"Red King?" Jimin looked from reassurance.
Jin nodded.
"Okay... Then, White... King..?" Jimin was guessing. Nevertheless, it was right.
"Uh..." He began to rub at his temples.
It was still hard. Even with the obvious picture in front of him.
Right, Jimin remembers how he had met Yoongi and Namjoon. The blue butterfly, and the cat that had been too attentive to be a cat.
"Blue Caterpillar, Cheshire Cat!" Jimin jumped, giddy and relieved to find himself able to do what he had been wanted to do.
Great! He remembered! That should be all he needed to remember. He can be let go now!
But nobody else was smiling. And Jimin stopped jumping.
"Is that right!?" He asked.
Nobody answered.
It was just an anonymous collection of gestures and glares.
Jimin looked back down at the card with the horrid painting.
"That's right, right?" Jimin shook his head. He got the name correct, so why was nobody answering?
"You forgot someone." Jin pointed to the card.
Jimin grimaced, looking back to the card.
One, two, three, four, five, six,
Seven?
"Who's the one with black hair?" Jimin looked back up.
He swore that person had just been blonde the second he had looked at the painting before.
"Jimin, I am the most honest person here right now. Believe me." Jin hushed through the telling.
He had been the most honest, but there was still a place to lie.
Okay, but believe what?
"Okay? So who is he???" Jimin bent the card, angered by no response.
"Jimin, who else is in this room with us."
"Me, but I'm blonde-"
The man in the card... Was blonde. But he is not now, which made an opposing point.
"You're the only one who's different." Yoongi had the most emotion he had seen in a while.
Despair, remorse.
"Different? How? What am I that you're all not?" Jimin giggled, rubbing off the seriousness of the talk.
"I mean I am looking, and I got everything correct. I remembered you all! I am not that much different, because you're all fucked up, and I am-"
"Alive."
Jimin's lips hadn't even finished it's sentence before his face fell.
"What?" He stepped away.
His eyes stuck back to the card.
The black-haired man had been the only one smiling with a hand in his heart.
"No, because Jin took your heart." Jimin scoffed again.
It was just a painting anyhow.
"I said you made me, and that I am... You." Jin did say that, but it did not mean it was honest.
"That's bullshit." Jimin was always in denial.
But how the fuck could Jin be him if he was standing as someone else, with someone's else name in front of him.
"Your doctors must not have taught you well enough within the differences between reality and illusion then. You have given them too much praise." Taehyung let himself detest his doctors, because he had been able to do so now.
"How many times have I mentioned the similarities between our minds? I don't know things because of intelligence. I know your thought the moment you think it." Taehyung had his hands above his waist the move around and gesture towards Jimin.
Taehyung was smart. He was good at lying too.
"But that doesn't make sens-" Jimin stopped once he found Taehyung mimicking his words with him, at the same time.
"The moment you have it, Jimin."
Jimin glowered at Taehyung's repetition.
"Your denial, dismisses it Jimin." Jimin looked over to Yoongi, who had a voice assuring enough for Jimin to actually listen.
It was all he could do.
He looked back at the card.
He was the one doing the killing.
But that's what everyone had done to him, so there was no need to feel guilt from a simple painting.
"I told you that I was your friend Jimin." Taehyung should not instigate Jimin's fears.
It was too much to listen now anyhow.
"Okay, so what, it's a fucking painting-!" Jimin threw the card down.
"I told you that you made m-"
"Taehyung, will you please fucking stop!?" Jimin wandered around in place, pulling at his hair.
Taehyung did.
Jimin stared, and so did everyone else. But Jimin had to be the first to cower away again.
He sobbed, stomping around with his disapproval of the picture on the card.
"Jimin." Namjoon walked up to Jimin to reach and caress him. To which Jimin shoved him away.
Taehyung groaned, picking up the card. He ran to hold Jimin by the neck, holding the card up to his face.
"This is what you need to remember Jimin."
"I remembered all that is needed." Jimin grit through his speaking, nailing down at Taehyung's shoulders to push away.
"Look at it, you wanted clear answers, here you go."
"I had spent years to forget this Taehyung, I do not want reminding." Jimin had stood pliant in Taehyung's choking.
It left him with the focus of his stuffy breathing, rather than the memory.
"That's was the only point to this Jimin." Taehyung loosened his hold, because he knew what Jimin was doing with it.
He knew the thought, the moment Jimin had it.
"What, so you're not alive huh? Really? You tell me I'm insane and unreasonable. Honestly!?" Jimin was projecting his lack of mental stability onto Taehyung, because it was his narcissistic way of coping.
"Listen-"
"How can I touch you? You cut me, I felt it, it scarred. Explain that?" Jimin seared through his tears and the shaking of his body and words.
"How do you think you ended up in the asylum? For no crime?" Yoongi cocked his head at Jimin's disproven innocence.
"You are far more than insane." He threw on to his explanation, which had Jimin tossing himself in place, crying.
"What the fuck does that mean!? I hadn't done anything!" Jimin cried, tearing at his arms to hope it was persuading enough to be let go.
"Name your innocence then Jimin." Taehyung had the card further from Jimin's face so that he could see better.
Jimin looked back at the card. That was him, killing the others.
He knelt down, facing down to the floor once Taehyung let him drop.
Remembering was always overwhelming, but it was little by little.
This, was not a little. It was all that he spent his years forgetting.
"Jimin, you are not okay, let's talk about this." Taehyung had himself backed away from the other.
Jimin was shifting side to side with a pitiless look across his face, fueled with the wrong thought of betrayal and loneliness.
"You said you'd all be there! I was by myself!" He cried.
"Jimin, we hadn't ever talked about it, you never even told us." Namjoon shook his head.
Jimin never said a word, never sent out a notice or invitation to his friends for this event.
"Yes I did!"
No, Jimin never said a word.
"Jimin, you're delusional, you see things that are not there. Say things that you have never said, so put the knife down." Yoongi put his hands up, to hope for the peaceful release of the blade.
Jimin's therapists have mentioned certain signs of schizophrenia from Jimin.
It had gotten worse since Jimin refused to show up to his appointments.
"Why did you lie and say you'd be there!?" Jimin cried with his fingers kept around the handle.
"Nobody lied Jimin, you never told anyone about the event. Why would we leave you by yourself!?" Hoseok had been the most willing to get closer to Jimin, who was too mental to think before he did anything.
"You did lie, left me alone just as everyone else had..."
It was trauma that had induced the thought of the people closest to him, leaving him.
"Jimin, no. Give me the kni-" Jungkook hurried up to reach for the knife.
To which Jimin panicked.
"You lied!" Jimin pulled back Jungkook's hair, tearing the knife across his throat, and down through his eye.
Jungkook's body tumbled away whenever Jimin let go.
It was that quick, and that easy.
To see a friend limp to the floor, lifeless.
Hoseok stumbled, away, too slow before Jimin had the knife in his eye too, and his stomach after stressing over a possible witness.
The blood pooled behind his head, his face dull and drawn with his last expression.
Hoseok had seen Jimin kill Jungkook, so he needed to go too.
So did everyone else.
They'd all be witnesses now.
Yoongi had already reached to call for someone, tapping hurriedly to hopefully reach a line.
Jimin had already ran to smack away the phone, tearing him a smile and slitting down his throat too.
The phone had been cracked beside his falling body, with the three digits typed in, ready to be dialed.
Namjoon had Jimin by his arms now, which caused him to drop the knife. Jimin kicked away, wailing and heaving from the taller's large arms around his.
Jimin threw himself down, slipping below the arms.
He fell to the floor, next to Jungkook.
Jungkook's eyes were open, looking oddly aware. Though the blood of his body told Jimin that he was not.
He felt around to frantically look for the knife, finding a tank of gas instead. It had always been kept at the corner of the kitchen for their stove.
He threw it open, tossing the gas over Namjoon whenever Namjoon had reached down to pick Jimin back up.
Namjoon stepped away from the intoxicating smell that would only follow him. It was a putrid smell, enough to wind Namjoon down with the distraction of it.
It gave Jimin enough patience to find a lighter, and light Namjoon aflame.
He dropped the lighter, kicking it aside to replace it with the knife again.
He stood, bloodied clothes almost weighing him back onto his knees.
He found Taehyung, appalled and unmoving across the room.
"You were always a fucking liar, teasing me." Jimin looked at Taehyung.
"What?" Taehyung really did not understand whether or not Jimin had been stuck on some mental will, or was being truthful.
"I was so obvious, and you never gave me the attention back... You just kept doing what you do, everything I liked..."
"Wha- Hey, Jimin, you never said these things until now-"
"Yes I fucking have, three times!" It was a false memory again.
And Taehyung couldn't do anything but help bring Jimin to truth.
"Jimin, I promise you, why would I lie? Look at me, why would I lie?" Taehyung spoke too well, well enough for Jimin's eyes to glass over and for him to snivel at the look on the others face.
"No, no promises." Jimin was too manic to feel that sadness, and lunged forward and cut across Taehyung's face, and down his chest. Taehyung let it happen.
Because really, he had a guilt for something untrue. But he let that be the last thing to perturb him, rather than the knife inside him, and his closest friend holding it.
"I hate to tell you now with you bleeding..." Jimin bit his lip, kneeling down further to Taehyung's ear, which had only let the knife surge further through his chest.
"I was obsessed. I really was, and I'll never forget you, not even when you're six feet beneath a grave. I'll find a way to remember you." Jimin was unreliably insane. An obsession would follow him for years because of that. And so would the pity.
"Not just me." Taehyung coughed through the blood in his throat, mentioning a secrete promise from Jimin to remember the others through something less than a sexual attraction or fixation.
Jin had been stuck in a corner to watch. He hopped onto Jimin, which only allowed the knife to plunge farther into Taehyung.
Jimin weeped, taking out the knife to throw it back and hack it into Jin's heart.
"You are so much like me..." Jimin found a similar look of fright on Jin's face. It was odd for it to be someone other than himself.
"You care about him more than yourself, yeah?" Jimin looked sick for smiling at the time.
Jin couldn't answer.
Jimin tossed his body aside.
He now found his hand under Taehyung's cut skin, grabbing up at the pulsating heart and mutilating his chest even more whenever he tore it out.
The heart pulsed, Taehyung did not. Neither did the others.
The heart was all Jimin wanted from Taehyung. Maybe not as literal, but it was all Jimin could take now that Taehyung was lifeless below him.
Jimin dropped the heart, standing.
The organ rolled across the floor and to Jin.
Jimin would blame Jin and say he took Taehyung's heart. He was the one in possession of it now.
Jimin looked around, dropping the knife to listen to his teeter with an echo onto the wood.
He began to think.
Another alternative thought.
He thought he had walked in on this.
Like he had not been the one who had done it.
So he called for help.
He said that he came into the home to see his friends slaughtered around the kitchen.
But whenever help came, it was easy to tell that he had been the one who had done the slaughtering.
So he found himself sent to a mental asylum, to be jailed there instead.
And within the asylum, he made a promise he had forgotten he had made.
To remember everyone.
So he spent his time there progressively building a false world with false people, who had been those he had killed.
Which had been more of a reason to be deemed insane, for him to live in a world with them to torture himself.
And he would do this, unaware.
Because he did,
Deserve it.
Jimin stood back up.
His head throbbed, and he had nothing to defend his true accusations.
He was the only one. Alive.
He looked back at those around him. They looked almost as despondent as him.
He let his head fall down, crying.
"I'm sorry." Was really all he could say.
Not that he'd be forgiven. He should have let the apology fall out before he took the knife to any of them.
Whenever he glanced halfway up, he found skin falling to the floor.
It had made a mess of noises, and left the idea of what it had sounded like when Jimin killed them.
He looked up entirely, Taehyung had his bone shown again.
Much to Jimin's remembrance.
The scar Jimin had torn into his face was much larger. Widening through the decay of time.
And chunks of skin fell down from Namjoon's nose and mouth, his teeth and nose bared to him. The face that burned under the lit gasoline.
Jungkook had his clock, that began to gush again. Time. Time that could not be taken back, or changed.
Yoongi had large teeth as a reoccurring physical reminder of the slit Jimin had given him, and Jin had torn tears and blood pooling from his nose, eyes, and mouth.
That's what had been the fall of his Wonderland. The world he made to remember them, to forget as punishment from his doctors.
It was when he took their lives, refused to take the blame, made them into unreal characters, and even began to forget those personas because of damnation.
Jimin was the most vulnerable he could have ever been.
Which was the point of his remembrance.
It was for him to be broken and worn enough, for the six of them to be able to inflict resenting harm onto him as unlivable beings, and use that to torment Jimin.
And that is what they did, nobody even spoke.
Jimin apologized again, but found himself tripping onto the floor with his arms held above him.
"What are- Wait this isn't what you wanted!? Me to remember!?" Jimin arched back to wail at the inability to move.
Nobody was answering again.
The six of them had just walked up with that same knife Taehyung had always used on Jimin.
That Jimin used on him, and everyone else.
That's why Taehyung was so masochistic. He was mocking Jimin's murderous abilities.
"Wai- That's not- Is this what you intended!?" Jimin cried again, wriggling aside from the knife.
Jimin was stuck under six bodies, and one blade.
Taehyung held up Jimin's head so that he faced up for Yoongi to take the knife and tear a half smile across his face.
Jimin's mouth fell open to send out morbid cries, from just one cut.
Namjoon tore open a red tank, and began to pour onto Jimin's legs.
Jimin looked down to the liquid. It was brownish and translucent.
Gasoline.
Namjoon threw down the tank, and found the lighter he used for cigarettes, lighting the gas instead.
Jimin couldn't even ask, or be to be handed mercy, because he found a hand covering his mouth.
Namjoon's hands picked through the rising fire to tear away Jimin's skin.
Jimin bent back, the screaming and begging, mercilessly becoming pointless because nobody would be around to care enough to help him.
Hoseok ground a knife into Jimin's eye, enough to preserve his recollection.
Now there was less for Jimin to see.
Nevertheless, the knife was taken and shoved back into Jimin's chest. It tore down, and the skin folded to the sides the more it was cut apart.
Jimin looked down, finding Taehyung hovering over him.
"A good moment. The attention I never gave you." He nodded.
Jimin shook his head, sobbing as he threw his head away from Taehyung.
He refused to look at whatever face he had made. Taehyung pulled him up to look.
"Yes." He smiled, pulling out Jimin's heart.
Jimin had already began to depart from the relentless burn and choking on his blood, he would have preferred for the harm to be enough to kill him sooner.
So that he didn't need to feel the tear of his heart from his body.
Still, had his consciousness. He was ready to kill himself if doable, because he was aware long enough to find Jin biting down at his heart.
The heart that he no longer needed, or wanted.
Everything began to hurt less. He heard less, felt less,
Cared less.
He will forget again. He will need to.
No, because his remembrance was his only form,
Of apology.
His memory was his, and their remedy.
Jimin opened his eyes.
The ceiling was dusted, rotting. The same as always. It was never nice to wake up to.
Especially when the dust had always fallen onto his face.
"It appears you had a bad dream, Mr. Park."
Jimin looked over to the doctor.
The doctor was smiling with a clipboard folding to their lap.
Jimin nodded.
"Would you like to talk about it?" The doctor clicked their pen.
She was going to make Jimin talk.
If not, he'd be starved of dinner again.
Jimin shook his head.
"I'm afraid talking will do me no good." It will do him anything but good.
This doctor was cooperative though, and patient.
"Can you at least give me an idea as to what it was?"
Jimin gnawed on his nails.
His hand fell from his mouth and to his heart. It was there, beating.
"It felt like it had been days. Months. And I hadn't remembered anything. But it was my dream? And the people-"
"Are they the same people you already have your dreams with? Those same six you had... You know." She mocked the gestures of stabbing someone, which demeaned Jimin.
"Yes. But this one was bad. They were abnormally aware of it all, and-" Jimin stopped, looking at a corner.
"And?"
"Um. A-And... C-Can we talk another time?"
The doctor looked over to where Jimin had stared.
"Who are you looking at?" She openly stared back to the same corner.
"No one." Jimin shook his head. He went to stand and walk over to the door beside that corner.
"Just a memory." He smiled.
It was going to be a long-term memory, one he'd refuse to let anyone forget.
The man had stood in that corner, a King of Hearts in his hand, that same knife in the other.
"Good moment." Jimin said, nodding.
His sleep was his good moment. It was the time to spend his life with old friends, away from the asylum, whether or not he had been meant to be killed in the end.
For something he had done. Something he does not deserve forgiving for.
Something he couldn't make up with anything but the unreal ideals of those same people, made up into whimsical characters that had himself, and his friends sworn into them.
The man had pointed up to the clock.
It was fifteen hours before Jimin would need to sleep again.
"Good moment." Taehyung pointed the knife towards Jimin.
Jimin kept smiling, and agreed to what he would have to sleep to that night.
As to whether or not it was just Jimin's mind and dreaming of these people, or if the specters of those had come into his characters to taunt him, Jimin could not tell.
He had no idea whether or not it was real. And similarly, neither did anyone else.
It became hard to disbelieve due to the burnt scars on his legs and the scars on his face that he had caught through the mirror across the room.
His doctors noticed the new scars every time Jimin would wake up from his night terrors.
And Jimin never had any reason for them. Neither did the doctors that watched Jimin sleep, and became able to prove that Jimin had not been the one harming himself. The scars would tear across Jimin within an accurate time. And his doctors would see it right when it would occur.
But maybe his doctors were delusional too. They had to be able to cope in an asylum somehow. Nobody sane could tolerate these things. Maybe though. Because nobody can tell.
Jimin once said it was his friends who hurt him, the ones he had made up. That was when his doctors began to torment him into forgetting them. Forgetting where and how his friends had gone away. It took years.
And it worked, momentarily. Maybe that's why he woke up with the most scars that night.
But he still struggled to tell between reality and delusions.
So as to what it was. Who knows.
Are the other six dead? Who knows.
If so, do they hold their true beings inside of Jimin's characters? Who knows.
But as for now, it is simply a memory.
Just a memory.